You probably haven’t heard about it. But one of the most critical energy developments in years is now gearing up for a major battle in America.

That’s a slate of new regulations around power pricing across the U.S. which have been proposed by the Trump-era Department of Energy (DOE), in order to give coal and nuclear power generation a boost — opened for public comment this week.

The troubled history of Britain’s replacement nuclear power station Hinckley Point C (HPC) will have received scant, if any, coverage in the U.S.

But the story is an illustration of the blind alley in which nuclear power finds itself. The debate is one that is being (or will be) enacted in many other countries that rely on nuclear power as part of their energy mix.

Improved infrastructure and higher voltage cables have in recent years sent prices for wind power tumbling

For the first time ever, the cost of generating energy from offshore wind farms in the UK has tumbled below the price that nuclearreactors will charge in future.

Official data published on Monday reveals that offshore wind projects due to generate power in 2021-22 were awarded contracts at £74.75 per megawatt hour, while those set to generate in 2022-23 were awarded contracts for a subsidy of just £57.50.

Jeremy Carl and David Fedor, research scholars at the Hoover Institution, discuss the state of nuclear energy in the U.S. They analyze nuclear’s benefits as well as the economic and policy challenges it faces.

By Milenko Martinovich

Nuclear energy, seemingly, has attributes Americans would want in an energy source: It does not produce carbon emissions